by Hugh Howey
All that remained was the red wool scarf that lay at the young man’s feet. The girl was gone forever and there was no one back home to miss her.
The man picked up the scarf, wrapped it round his neck and sat on the grass under the ancient oak tree. It was a beautiful oak tree now, full of life, its branches heavy laden with lush green leaves and golden acorns, sitting alone on a hill, overlooking the town as it had done for many years and would continue to do for many more.
Wendy C. Allen a.k.a. Eelkat
is a short story author who lives in Maine, with a dog and 13 cats. EelKat has been writing Gothic Horror, Monster Porn, Space Fantasy, Science Fiction, Gorn, Bizarro, & Historical Romance since 1978. You can find out more at
Eelkat’s Website
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Mystery
The Little Chill
A Three-Minute Mystery
Lindy Moone
I wrench open my desk drawer and grab the ringing phone. I told my receptionist not to put through any calls…
Too bad that was weeks ago, when I still had a receptionist.
“Spanner Employment. Spanner speaking.” That’s me, Bill Spanner. The guy who can’t afford voice-mail.
“Billy, I can’t find Schnitzel. I can’t find her anywhere!” That’s Wanda on the phone. Wanda’s my neighbor. Schnitzel’s her dachshund.
“Not now, Wanda!”
I hang up the phone and turn back to my client. Today’s job-seeker, my sister Ambrosia, is a “short-skirted, thick-legged, gum-snapping skank.” Those were Mom’s words, not mine, when she dragged her into my office the first time. Now, even Mom’s given up on her.
Ambrosia taps two-inch nails on my desk, and blows a four-inch bubble. “Whatcha got?”
My sister’s like bad chili; she repeats on me. I’ve run out of jobs for her—all except one, the one that makes me cringe.
“You can work for me, gratis, while I look for other opportunities for you. You owe me money, anyway.”
Ambrosia stops tapping. “Fine. But don’t call me ‘gratis’.”
“You can start tomorrow.”
“Gimme twenty bucks.”
“Get out.”
“See ya tomorrow.”
“Say hi to Mom.”
An hour later, I head across the street to The Fancy Burger for lunch. My apartment’s upstairs, above the diner. So is Wanda’s. She runs the place.
Wanda. I blew off Wanda!
I feel like a creep. Wanda’s a good friend, and Schnitzel’s okay—for a dachshund that thinks she’s a goat. She even chewed up my dad’s gold watch.
The Fancy Burger is locked up tight. Wanda’s never been closed at lunchtime before. All day, every day, she flips burgers in a strapless gown and tiara. Sure, that’s a strange outfit—but then, burger-flipping’s strange work for a vegan. There’s nothing predictable about Wanda, except that she’s always working.
Except now, she isn’t.
I collide with Wanda on the third floor landing. Her beehive hairdo looks deflated and mascara is dribbling down her cheeks. She flings her arms around me, anyway.
“Billy, Schnitzel’s really gone! Someone took her!”
“Are you sure you looked everywhere? Did you check the street?”
Well, someone had to say it.
“I tell you, she’s been kidnapped!”
Dog-napped, technically. But now’s not the time…
Wanda washes her face while I check the apartment. Sure enough, Schnitzel’s gone, but there aren’t any signs of a break-in.
Wanda pads out of the bathroom in a tattered robe, looking adorable without makeup. Shame on me for thinking burgers wouldn’t be bad…for breakfast.
“Wanda, is anything else missing?”
“Yes. Look, Billy, I have to tell you something. Promise you’ll keep my secret!”
“Um… I promise?”
Watching Wanda tear at her hair, I realize that something’s different about her. In the four years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen her cry, never seen her looking vulnerable.
Never seen her without the tiara.
But who would swipe that flashy, phony thing?
“My name isn’t Wanda,” she says. “It’s Blake Weatherley.”
“Holy crap.” I sink down—luckily, onto her couch. “You’re the missing heiress?”
Wanda sits down next to me. “So you see…why I can’t call the police.”
“All I see is a missing dog and tiara.” Actually, I don’t see them. I see a missing heiress. “Why did you run away?”
“Because when my father dies, I get everything. I don’t want it. My step-brothers do.”
I can’t help thinking that Wanda looks miserable. Desperate. More desperate than I’d look with billions in the bank.
She goes on, “If I don’t sign my inheritance over to them, they’ll kill me. If I do, they’ll kill Daddy for the money! He has a bad heart; if I tell the police, the scandal itself could kill him. Billy, I don’t care about the tiara…but it can be traced. And I’ve got to find Schnitzel. She’s all I’ve got.”
I want to shout, “You’ve got me!” But I’m no detective. What if the dog has been napped? I can’t stand to see Wanda—or Blake, or whatever her name is—cry over the ornery little wiener.
While Wanda goes to her bedroom to dress, I poke around, looking for clues.
No signs of a struggle.
How much struggle could a wiener put up? Schnitzel’s ferocious, an ankle-nipping devil in disguise. That’s why Wanda latches the doggie-door, so Schnitzel can’t sneak down into the diner anymore.
But the doggie-door isn’t latched.
“WANDA,” I holler, “WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE THE TIARA?”
“THIS MORNING. IT WAS ON THE COUCH.”
And the couch is plastered with dog hair.
Oh, where, oh, where…has that little dog gone?
It comes to me in an icy flash.
I grab Wanda’s keys and try to sound calm. “I’M GONNA LOOK AROUND. BE RIGHT BACK.”
I dash down the stairs, fumble through the keys, unlock the door to the diner and wrench open the walk-in freezer—all without stopping to breathe.
The door screeches on its hinges. Tiny teeth gleam in the dark.
I flick on the light. Packages of meat are piled on the floor, each with a corner chewed. A shivering, frost-grizzled wiener growls weakly up at me, then drops her head onto the tiara between her paws.
I grab the pooch and the bling, back out of the freezer and shut the door. Another hour and she’d have been frozen, a popsicle.
PUPsicle.
Note to self: Don’t share that pun with Wanda.
Shivering, heart racing, I tuck Schnitzel in my shirt to warm her up. She clamps her teeth on my earlobe; guess the wiener’s gonna be alright. I carry her upstairs, thinking God, her toenails need clipping and I’m crap at my job. Maybe I could be a detective. Sure, this case is closed, but there’s more to Wanda’s story. Sooner or later, someone will recognize her.
Later, I hope. And I hope she’ll tell me everything—tomorrow, after breakfast. Right now, all that matters is Schnitzel.
Dachshunds, not diamonds, are a girl’s best friend.
Lindy Moone
is the wildly enigmatic (mostly false) author of Hyperlink from Hell: A Couch Potato’s Guide to the Afterlife and comes from a short line of mental health professionals (true), and now lives far, far away from them: someplace warm and sometimes rainy, where she can play with her pencils as much as she likes (true). She trained as an artist (true) but always wanted to write (painfully true) stories — and always did, mostly in secret (mostly true). She is stunningly beautiful (sadly, false), twenty-two years old (Pants on Fire!), and is married to “The Great Fisherman Boo” (true). Lindy likes dogs, cats and thunderstorms — but not at the same time, because it hurts (too true).
Some of Lindy’s favorite books are Catch-22, the Gormenghast series
by Mervyn Peake, Alice in Wonderland and The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy (true). So that explains her writing (mostly true) nonsense.
Oh, and she has such a crush on Neil Gaiman (true).
Lindy can be contacted via Twitter, on her Facebook page, and through her in(s)ane website, Literary Subversions. It’s a veritable loony bin of wordplay, silly pictures, trivia about her books, and more. Please stop by, especially if you know an easy way to get cats to take worm medicine.
Lindy Moone’s Website
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Gay Fiction — Humor
The Fiar
Andrew Ashling
I was only there because Jason can’t drive, due to what we call his condition. Nervous as a nest of kittens on crack. We don’t give it a clinical name.
We know how to take care of Jason. That’s because we’re a family. Except there are no parents. It’s just us. Four guys. City Hall thinks we’re brothers. Except we’re not related. We know each other, though. In the biblical sense. Maybe that’s not the right terminology, but you know what I mean.
Jason is our computer whiz kid and most of the time he’s virtually lost. He sleeps four hours a day, if that. Jason is about my age, but his slender frame and delicate features make him an easy target. An unfortunate encounter with a bully landed him in a hospital a while ago. So we gently encouraged him to take a self-defense course. After having made the bully’s life living hell, of course. See? That’s taking responsibility for each other.
We do things together, we love each other and we live together in Matt’s house. Basically, your yawn-inducing, standard family unit. Some people might disagree with that qualification. It’s incredible how much we don’t care. We don’t need to care. We’ve got each other.
When Jason decided he had to go to this nerd fest to stock up on bits and bobs for his computer farm, he needed one of us to drive him there.
Matt had some legitimate other business to attend to and Jamie, our youngest, flat out refused.
“I’m sorry, Jason. You know computers make me break out in a rash,” he said.
Jamie is a sweet kid, but he has a temper and he can be a tad direct. Knowing him, he was probably already consumed with remorse. Usually he quietens his conscience by cooking us a sumptuous dinner. I couldn’t wait. That boy can cook, I tell you.
I jingled my car keys.
“I’ll take you,” I heard myself say, although I realized I was condemning myself to a long drive and two interminable hours of utter boredom in Geekville.
“Oh, thank you, Alan,” Jason said, his face lighting up. He looked in his wallet and counted the contents. “I’ll pay for gas, of course,” he added. This meant buying fewer geeky gadgets and spare parts.
“My treat, sweetheart,” I said. He looked at me like a puppy who had just been thrown a juicy bone. Well, I can use the karma points.
“I’ll make it up to you. When we return we’ll take a shower together and I’ll wash you. Then I’ll give you a massage.” Jason gave me a bashful look from under his eyelashes.
I couldn’t believe that I had just been promised the royal treatment. You haven’t lived until Jason’s strong but tender fingers have kneaded all fatigue and tension out of your muscles. You haven’t been clean until Jason has washed every last square inch of you.
“Already looking forward to it, sweetie,” I said, “but let’s do it the other way around.”
Believe me, you need that shower after Jason has given you a massage.
Above the entrance hung a banner. It read, “Welcome to the Computer Fiar.” Compliments of the people who write the code for our computers. As far as I was concerned it might as well have read, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.”
It was exactly as I had expected. The whole hall smelled of plastic, metal and the bodily fumes of hundreds of unwashed, acned cellar dwellers. A veritable house of pleasure for the olfactory-impaired technofreak.
Jason dove into the crates adorning the first stall, forgot all about me, and started burrowing through what to me looked like the contents of R2D2’s diaper.
He had said it would only take about two hours, but I knew I was in silicon purgatory for at least three. I’m not all that patient and I would probably have died from terminal tedium, if it weren’t for this trick I have. I stayed a few feet behind Jason and watched him having fun. Time flew by.
We went back to my car. Jason was carrying a box with what to him were probably exceptional treasures. He enthused over them, citing all kinds of technical terms, numbers and arcane mumbo jumbo. It was all Geek to me, but I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about. To me his box looked like the maintenance kit of the Millennium Falcon.
“I know it took slightly more than two hours, Alan,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Four hours and twenty-seven minutes, sweetie, but who’s counting? The important thing is you found your, eh, stuff.”
He smiled and gave me a light kiss on the cheek.
“Hey, queer boys,” some ape called from behind us.
“Could you hold this for me?” Jason said, handing me his treasure trove. Then he walked over to the talking simian. “Were you addressing us, you unbelievable skid mark in the underpants of the universe?” he asked, polite as always.
The ape started tapping Jason on the chest with his right index finger.
“Yeah, and what about it, queer—”
I heard the dry crack of an ape finger breaking. It reminded me Jamie was cooking. I hoped he was making us his famous Chicken Royale with the little oven-baked potatoes. One of those drumsticks had my name on it.
Howling with pain, the ape lunged forward. Seconds later he flew through the air in a gravity-defying arc. He landed on his face on the pavement of the parking lot. There was some blood. There were parts of teeth scattered about. All in all, broken nose included, his face had been improved considerably.
“So,” I asked, handing Jason back his box, “this self-defense course is working out for you, then?”
Andrew Ashling
has no great literary ambitions. He just tells stories, and tries to do it as good as he can, hoping other people will enjoy reading them.
He loves exploring what makes people tick, what makes them do the often quirky things they do. He also enjoys playing with expectations, boundaries, taboos even. He believes people can change if they really want to, and that society and the world are makeable.
The Fiar is a flash story in the same setting as his collection of five short stories Just Don’t Mess With Us — Family Matters, but his current project is the Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse series, a mediaval-ish Epic Fantasy series with gay main characters.
You can find out more at his website.
Andrew Ashling’s Website
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Dystopian
Last Words
David J. Normoyle
“Whatever happens you are going to die today. Don’t make this awkward,” I said, sitting down opposite Drew. I always started the Ritual with those words.
Drew’s arms lay across the table and his head was slumped on top of them.
“Come on. I know you want to talk.”
Drew’s only answer was a muffled sob. His hair was gray and disheveled.
“I didn’t quite catch that.”
Drew looked up. Tears streaked down his craggy face. “Leave me to die in peace.”
I drummed my fingers on the desk. Once, twice, three times.
He glared at me defiantly. “How can you sleep at night? Ghoul!”
They always had something to say. “I sleep well. I do an important job.”
“I’m a rancher. I produce food, allow people to eat. Why should I die, yet you live?”
“You are fifty, Mr. Drew. Society can’t afford old people.”
“My work means that less people starve. Let ghouls and other unproductives be the first into
the death chamber.”
“I provide an important service.” Being called a ghoul had long since ceased to bother me. “The government likes to make sure people are happy, even in their last moments. Perhaps especially then. At the end, everyone wants to talk. Some want to confess and repent. Others want to remember what was. Still others want to curse and shout.”
“The government doesn’t care about us. We are tools to them.”
Drew seemed to be a cursing and shouting sort. “When a tool outlives its usefulness, it is discarded. Not the case here. The government cares for you until the very end. The Last Words Ritual is provided as a comfort.”
Drew snorted. “When I slaughter cattle, I make sure they aren’t panicked beforehand. Spoils the meat. The government can go straight to hell with their comfort.”
I smiled. “The government cares for you, and forgives you.”
“What’s the meaning of all I’ve done, everything I’ve worked for?” Drew’s hands contorted into claws. They were surprisingly smooth for rancher’s hands.
I was used to this question. As their last seconds ticked away, even the least philosophical person yearned for meaning. “You have lived a valuable and productive life, Mr. Drew. Draw satisfaction from that.” I wished I had a better answer—offering meaning was one place where the ancient religions had an advantage over science. But I’d found that most were happy enough to simply be told that their life had been worth something. It was about being confident in how you said it.
